The Carnelian Throne (23 page)

“Look, son. You’re a Beneguan and I’m a Laonan, and there’s no getting around that. Outside the Wall of Mnemaat, men don’t farm fields expressly for campts to trample. We’re hunters, gatherers—not draft beasts for Wehrdom. We eat what we can catch, and not just an occasional fish. And women don’t call the shots, nor are we forbidden what tools our resources can provide. Understand? Those are the pathetic remnants of our old ways, the ways from which you and I and Heicrey and Eviduey and Mahrlys-iis-Vahais are sprung.

“So?” He feigned unconcern, reminding himself that he had eaten campt liver and the kills of Mahrlys’ ptaiss.

“So,
those are
the ways of man, the ways such as built Dey-Ceilneeth and the gardens of Othdaliee in which you’re so anxious to test your mettle.”

“And those ways failed them, and they fail you,” observed Deilcrit. “They almost wiped life from the world. If man is no longer the most successful, be comforted: some men are wehrs.”

“You’re really gone, now, aren’t you?”

And Deilcrit wished he could speak to Quendros alone, of all Kirelli had revealed, but this was not the time or the place.

“I am Beneguan.”

“That’s right: a man who would not slay a ptaiss for its hide if he’d freeze to death without it but rather bend down with his head to the ground and let the ptaiss eat him.”

Quendros stared long and piercingly at Deilcrit.

“Boy, I can’t tell how much you’re going to comprehend, but I think I’m beginning to see my part in this. If I’m wrong, that’s my problem. But I ask you, by reason of all that has passed between us, to listen, and open your mind and try to understand.”

In that pause cut to fit his assent, he allowed that he would do those things. Heicrey edged closer to him, and he put his arms around her and she laid her head in his lap.

“Once there was a man called Laore, and he taught wisdom and grace in a time so far gone as not to matter, except for the irrevocable changes that have come to pass from out of what he wrought. It was a light of learning, a way for man to become more godlike, that he taught my ancestors, and from him sprang a sect, and then another, whose revelations were scientific and whose blessings unto the race of man were material as well as spiritual.

“As with all sweeping changes, some acceded, some obstructed, and some led revolution. It was a long and tumultuous reign that knowledge had, and then man proved himself too shortsighted to deal with the power he had come to wield.”

Deilcrit saw the room anew. His awareness multiplied and came back on him from all sides, and he knew that Kirelli and some few others looked through his eyes.

“The green sword you got from these folk at the Spirit Gate: it comes from that age.”

That startling bit of information jerked his attention back from the new perspective Wehrdom offered.

“It is said that the blade is unsheathed anew at every change of ages; long it was thought lost to us, the property of Mnemaat, who reclaimed it at the Fall of Man. But you have come to possess it, and for that reason alone I think I might have to aid you .... But I digress. I was trying to explain to you both why Heicrey’s mother was so upset, and rightly.

“Just prior to the Fall, man could work some godlike wonders. Dey-Ceilneeth is one. The Eye of Mnemaat, which works by mind’s power but without magic, is another. Even greater wonders did they create in the realm of medical science, and they turned their skills to the eradication of death itself, and to the perfection of the race of man. This is where the Laonan faith split in two.” Quendros coughed.

Heicrey nodded. Deilcrit wondered what possible significance this might have upon the present.

“Who precipitated the war, we will never know: too much was lost. But in the aftermath, two things became increasingly clear: first, that war had so despoiled the land that man as he had evolved might not survive; and second: that many of his experimental creatures, once useful in the search for a stronger race of man, were not experimental anymore. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Deilcrit, “I do not.”

Quendros sighed. “I cannot teach you enough science to enable you to comprehend the process, but I can make it very simple: Wehrdom is man’s creature. Man and evolution’s. Certain genetic predispositions were injected into the gene pool in the hopes that in the metamorphosis from the old evolutionarily stable niche, by then obviously untenable, to the new stable state that might obtain when nature sorted out which of her creatures might live and adjust, and which could not and would perish, man might win a place. And if not man, then his stepchild, the ossassim ....

“But none had reckoned on the communications ability mutating on its own among all the recombinants and artifically structured genes and the catalysts the added radioactivity provided .... Wehrdom began as a stopgap measure, in case man did not survive. Some say Imca-Sorr-Aat was Mnemaat’s agent, oversaw Wehrdom’s development. I’d like to ask him ....”

“The child, Father!” Heicrey sniffed impatiently.

“Right, the child. Well, what we now know as ossasim was a last-ditch attempt, and those who could work such miracles did not survive the birth of their last creation. So when it became clear that ossasim come in only one sex, and only from human wombs, it was too late. And when, even later, it became likely that man per se would also survive, the particular ability to produce ossasim either by breeding with one, or by breeding to a human whose grandparents had those particula
r
latents in their history, was well-seated in the race. As my ancestors would have said Ossasirn have a set of evolutionarily stable strategies the highest paying of which is coupling across species lines.”

“That is impossible. You cannot mate a ptaiss with a quenel.”

“You can mate two varieties of any breed. And I’m not talking about what we can do; I’m talking about what our forebears could do. They could take apart the tiny particles, like beads strung on a string, that make you the person you are, and rearrange them in any order they pleased. They could even split each bead in half, and attach disparate halves. They had not only the choice of which bead lay next to which, but of what each bead itself was composed.”

“But they could not make ossasim females?” Deilcrit disbelieved, hard-pressed to imagine beings that put other beings together with strings and beads.

“They might have erased the imperfection if they had survived. But they did not, and we are the people we appear as a result of what they did.”

“You are telling me that Heicrey is a wehr?” Deilcrit hazarded.

“No, I am telling you that you are one, even though you do not look like one, and that a child resulting from your union with one of Heicrey’s descent will have only one chance in three of being a true man or woman.”

“You said that before you told me all this.”

“I know, Deilcrit, but I thought it might help you if you understood
why
the child must die.”

“I do not understand it yet. If it is lucky, by your standards, it will be human. If it is not, it will be an ossasim. What is its third choice?”

“It will be like you,” said Quendros softly.

“I see nothing so terrible in that,” Deilcrit replied. Heicrey did, and she commenced weeping once more.

Try as he might, he could not understand why Quendros thought it better to be a “true man or woman” than a man of whatever kind he himself was, or than an ossasim.

But when Quendros stared steadily into him, he said: “I have listened, and I have tried to understand. If by calling me other than a man you feel you can absolve your obligation to attend me, I hope you have succeeded in your own sight. In mine, you need not have bothered. Stay or come as you please. These distinctions are too subtle, between kinds of men. There is a saying that man has not long to live in Wehrdom. Perhaps the truth of the saying is rooted somewhere in what you have just told me.” He stood, hitched the sword belt up on his hips. “You may keep the sword of white metal. Stay here with your family and adjudicate these weighty decisions. You neither want nor need my interference.” He reached down and ruffled Heicrey’s hair as she pressed against him, arms thrown around his waist. “I offered to be whatever your customs demanded, but what I lack is suitable blood, and I cannot change that. So I will leave you to do as your conscience thinks best.” The wehr-call was strong in him, so strong he heard his words over its cooing.

“I do not understand how you can be so dense,” snarled Quendros, snapping to his feet. “I told you, I’m coming. And I told you, I just wanted you to understand Lohr-Ememna’s grief, and Heicrey’s decision, when she makes it. It is not up to you or me, but the two women, and I’m damn ready to be quit of women’s troubles myself.” With that he went and got the white-metaled blade, mumbling: “Be thrice cursed if I were fool enough to stay here when I have a chance of laying eyes of the bearers of Se’keroth, or even regaining her.”

But Deilcrit heard no more over Heicrey’s heartbroken snuffling. Even if he had, he did not know the name of the green-bladed weapon he bore, over which so many before him had died.

It was no easy leavetaking. He promised a multitude of promises which he doubted his ability to fulfill, even if he had so intended, in order to ease Heicrey’s pain.

When they were quit of the but and Lohr-Ememna’s imprecations upon both their heads, he heaved a sigh of relief that made Quendros chuckle, and that one remarked that he, himself, felt rather like he had when they first stood beyond the Wall of Mnemaat and watched the Northern Gate close slowly amid the creak of winches, and knew freedom once more.

Deilcrit took a deep breath, and agreed that there was no freedom that he could see within Quendros’ hut.

Quendros advised him to take his own wisdom to heart, and stay out from between the clutches of the ladies from that moment on.

Then Kirelli joined them, flapping with one small joyous cry to land on Deilcrit’s right shoulder.

“Kirelli, this is Quendros, my ally among men,” said Deikrit.

Kirelli’s polite “Breet” was not answered by Quendros, who became of a sudden immersed in a study of the ground they trod and the vagaries of the trail ahead. When pressed, the Laonan muttered about whelts’ legendary treachery.

Deilcrit, as the wehr pressed its beak against his cheek, found that he had become possessed of a thousand eyes through which his progress could be seen: from above; from every side; even from so great a height and distance that he was only a possibility sliding through the dark, as if he stood on the pinnacle of Othdaliee and awaited himself.

Quendros indicated a right-hand turning, and as they took the fork, Deilcrit queried the whelt of ossasim. Some short while later he said to Quendros, “You are not wholly right about Wehrdom. Kirelli says that you are wrong about ossasim. Those women who look human, but are wehrs, are ossasim, not women.”

Quendros shook his head, saying, “Go on.”

“Ossasim have no interest in the blind, deaf-and-dumb females we call truly human. But between the manlike wehr and the ossasim wehr there is competition for human wehr females. Ossasim can become, if they wish and if there is a need, female for a season, and procreate. Human wehrs cannot.”

He waited to see if Quendros would speak. Deilcrit wanted him very much to speak. But he did not, and Deilcrit said: “From the wombs of both ossasim and human wehr females have begun to come spawn which are wingless and oftimes infertile, but some show themselves capable of playing female to a winged ossasim.”

“It is long overdue.” Quendros grunted. “Nature heals all wounds.”

“Does she? I think that the end of the ossasim’s dependence upon mankind is an awful omen. Once there is no need for man, then what? We receive from ossasim a certain favoritism: most ossasim suckle at woman’s breast. Though the competition for females between man wehr and ossasim is strong, Kirelli says it is a mere foreshadowing of doom. Once ossasim are secure as a species, the man who is not a wehr will perish.”

“And the man, who is?” growled Quendros in an uneasy tone.

“Ah,” said Deilcrit, “now, that is what remains to be seen.”

Both fell then into their own thoughts. All that could be heard was the cough of ptaiss and the slither of berceide and the low bark of the quenel who were also a part of the unseen entourage ranged around them in the wood. So did they trek untroubled out of Nothrace by night, in the safekeeping of the prince of wehrs.

I recall a number of their miscalculations: occasions on which I was too besotted by the drug to even realize that the man strung by his manacled wrists before me was Sereth; occasions upon which they would remind me of that fact, and of who I myself was. And I would strive to hold some elusive significance that I might attach to his identity and my own, succeed therein; but by that time have forgotten why I struggled so against blind existence; and fall into the difficulties of recollecting myself once more. I have thought that if they had known me, known my history and what previous experience I had had with living bereft of self, they might have tried some other tack. As it happened, I was the wrong woman on which to try that sort of interrogation, and they got nothing from me in that manner.

Which I suppose led them to gradually decrease the amount of drug in my system, a process which I recall as a gradually coalescing dream which slid into reality so subtly that I cannot remember exactly when I lay in the straw of our cell and realized that I was deep in some soporific’s embrace. There was a long period of struggle with this concept during which I seemed to sit within my body’s cavity, my own ribs a white framework sprung amid orange-brown, pulsing flesh. And I wrote thereupon my plight in huge red letters that glowed when I looked at them. Which I did, bereft of relevance so completely that I would spell out the letters slowly, puzzlingly, but by the time I had reached the last, forgetful of what letter the first had been.

I was starting once more at the first letter of the first word scrawled on my inner eye’s lid when I felt rough hands lift me up, and a sharp liquid forced down my throat, and an interminable journeying that must have covered all of three man-lengths.